Enrollee Incentives in Consumer Directed Health Plans: Spend Now or Save for Later?
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Roger D Feldman
We propose a model of enrollee incentives in consumer directed health plans (CDHPs) and estimate the model with data from a large employer that offered a CDHP in addition to two traditional health insurance plans. In the CDHP a portion of the enrollee's pretax compensation is placed in an account that can be used to pay for out-of-pocket medical expenses or rolled over to the next year. In a multi-period model, healthy employees should save part of the account to pay for future medical contingencies. We measured health status by the employee's predicted medical spending in the year prior to the CDHP offering. We found that healthy CDHP enrollees tended to spend less in three post-enrollment years than a comparison group of healthy employees who elected to keep their traditional health insurance coverage. However, CDHP enrollees with high predicted spending—a measure of poorer health—spent more than their comparison group of traditional health insurance enrollees in the following three years.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- The Contributions of Improved Therapy and Earlier Detection to Cancer Survival Gains, 1988-2000
- From Cradle to Classroom: High Birth Weight and Cognitive Outcomes
- Enrollee Incentives in Consumer Directed Health Plans: Spend Now or Save for Later?
- State Dependence among the Uninsured: Accounting for Feedback to Health and Employment
- The Effect of Massachusetts' Health Reform on Employer-Sponsored Insurance Premiums
- Predictors of Internal Medicine Resident Satisfaction with Teaching by Attendings
- Reinsurance for High Health Costs: Benefits, Limitations, and Alternatives
- Macroeconomic Effects of HIV/AIDS Prevalence and Policy in Nigeria: A Simulation Analysis
- Obesity and Price Sensitivity at the Supermarket
- Is SARS a Poor Man's Disease? Socioeconomic Status and Risk Factors for SARS Transmission
- Are Increasing 5-Year Survival Rates Evidence of Success Against Cancer? A Reexamination Using Data from the U.S. and Australia
- Do Changes In Cigarette Taxes Impact Youth Smoking? Evidence from Canadian Provinces
- Health Risk, Income, and Employment-Based Health Insurance
